Image by Susan Melkisethian via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
Originally on RT America on Aug 5, 2021
The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel on Jul 1, 2022
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses censorship and new digital media with Peter B. Kaufman, author and Program Manager at MIT Learning Center.
The rise of new digital technologies that are rapidly supplanting print have conspired not to make knowledge and information more accessible. But harder and harder to obtain. The ability by a handful of global digital medias platforms such as Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to decide what information is widely distributed, and increasingly what information is censored, presages an Orwellian world of approved speech and thought. These digital monopolies are opaque and unaccountable to the public.
They know everything about us. We know nothing about them. They lack any moral compass or sense of social responsibility. They are driven solely by the twin desires for profit and unrivaled power over information systems. They are bonded with national security agencies, making us the most watched, monitored, spied upon and upon and photographed population in human history, eviscerating privacy. Are these digital behemoths ushering in a new dark age, one that will replicate the tyrannies of the past? And what can we do to protect the freedom of information and thought?
Peter B. Kaufman is author of the new book, The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge.
See also:
Excerpt: The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge by Peter B. Kaufman
From the archives:
Colonialism’s Final Form: Mercenaries and Weaponized Surveillance, by Rainer Shea
Kristinn Hrafnsson: Pegasus Spyware Leaks Show Nobody is Safe From Surveillance!
Navigating the Digital Commons on Our Own Terms, by Kenn Orphan
Edward Snowden: The Dangers Are Real
Matt Taibbi: They are Essentially Controlling the Flow of Information
Internet’s Own Boy: Film on Aaron Swartz Captures Late Activist’s Struggle for Online Freedom
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